TLDR; I received an offer, immediately took the necessary steps to begin preparing my employer for my departure, and then accepted the offer, but by the time I accepted (4 business days later) the offer had been rescinded. When I communicated my disappointment and frustration about the situation, the CEO refused to accept any responsibility, argued w/ me about why he was justified, and claimed I was unprofessional for receiving a counter offer from my current employer.
The CEO of Social Supply reached out to me with a job opportunity, and even though I was already employed, I replied. We had a few phone calls, everything moved quickly, & I ended up getting an offer less than 2 weeks after my first interview.
I told Social Supply I was very excited & thankful, but I needed time to think it over. As I mentioned, I was employed elsewhere (which I clearly communicated to the CEO), so I wanted to talk to my current employer first. He understood, & told me I should get back to him ASAP, ideally before the end of the week. This was on a Tuesday, so I felt a little rushed, but I began making the necessary preparations immediately.
After a few follow up emails with Social Supply, I and a couple meetings with my employer, I received my counter offer from my current employer Friday afternoon, and decided that I was going to accept the job at Social Supply - woohoo, right?!
I called the CEO on Friday evening. He didn’t pick up, & I didn’t want to deliver the good news over voicemail or email, so I left a message and sent an email telling him to call me back. I never heard from him again until Monday afternoon, at which point I accepted the job offer only to find out that the CEO apparently had gotten “a bad gut fulling” that I wasn’t going to accept, so he had re-initiated the interviewing process with other candidates and couldn’t allow me to accept the offer until he had spoken to the rest of the executive team, but that he would get back to me by the end of the day.
Needless to say, I was a bit shocked - I had attempted to get this man a response in 3 business days, and I was doing so because of an arbitrary timeline that he had imposed, yet somehow that still wasn’t fast enough, and the offer he extended to me less than a week ago was no longer on the table. & Let me remind you, I was already employed, the CEO reached out to me, AND he did not communicate any contingencies associated w/ the timing of my response, so taking a few business days to make a decision seemed like a reasonable thing to do.
Nevertheless, Monday evening came and went, and I got no response. Tuesday came and went, and still no response. Wednesday morning, I finally get a call, and the CEO informs me that he is withdrawing the offer and giving it to another candidate who was cheaper, and who willingly accepted the offer without hesitation.
I told him I was very disappointed with the result, and that I was also upset with the way the situation was handled. Because of him, I was now in a very awkward position with my current employer seeing as they were now fully aware that I was potentially leaving for a different job. Now, that different job did not exist, leaving me to pick up the pieces of the mess that Social Supply had now created in my professional life.
I told them I felt mislead, and that there was never any strict deadlines or contingencies communicated to me, so for them to now withdraw the offer after I had already made plans to leave my company was very unprofessional. The CEO responded by claiming that I was the one being unprofessional for attempting to hear a counter offer, and went on to try and justify his position on the matter by bickering with me back and forth about why he felt he had done nothing wrong.
It was a very unfortunate and disappointing conversation, where I was constantly interrupted and shot down. Nothing I said seemed to matter, and this stubborn CEO was not going to admit that he was wrong under any circumstance.
I finally ended the phone call, attempting to be the bigger man by wishing him well, but ultimately I don’t think this scenario could have played out any worse. I received an offer, immediately took the necessary steps to begin preparing my employer for my departure, and then accepted the offer, but by the time I accepted (4 business days later) the offer had been rescinded. When I communicated my disappointment and frustration about the situation, the CEO refused to accept any responsibility, argued w/ me about why he was justified, and claimed I was unprofessional for receiving a counter offer from my current employer.
